Compost State of Mind

It’s been nearly two months since Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans to expand pilot composting programs across New York City. The Department of Sanitation reports that since the expansion of such programs, over eighty tons of waste have been diverted from the city’s landfills. With thirty-two hundred residences already enrolled, the city aims to reach a total of a hundred and twenty thousand by next year.

While composting in New York might seem like a recent innovation, for Christine Datz-Romero, it’s just part of living in the city. She’s the co-founder and executive director of the Lower East Side Ecology Project, which began as a small community recycling project more than twenty-six years ago. It’s since expanded to composting, electronic-waste disposal, and open-space advocacy across New York. Datz-Romero is excited about the Mayor’s expanded programs, but worries that without a robust infrastructure, the very notion of citywide composting might end up wasting taxpayers’ time and money.